Dancer Nick Nikolaou walks onto stage basked in a warm orange glow; the music is expansive but glitching out, like what happens in a movie when things get overwhelming. It is a promising opening for a performance intended as a “love letter” to queers and the club spaces dear to us – unfortunately, what follows ends up feeling strangely solipsistic.
Anatomy of a Night is an hour mostly filled with Nikolaou dancing as they would at a club, with episodes demarcated by costume changes, music genre shuffles, and the heavy lifting of niftily programmed LEDs. Populist hits from Britney to KATSEYE’s ‘Gnarly’ give way to heavier dubs. These transitions feel less like the temporal melt of a night out than the result of an enthusiastic friend on the aux; on-stage costume changes add to this disjoint, with the exception of one long interval where Nikolaou exits the room and leaves us staring at nothing in the dark.
Nikolaou is a fabulous dancer, but as they throw themself into it, one wishes we could just join them on the dance floor instead. If the performance is choreographed, it neuters the intoxicating spontaneity of clubbing without supplementing much else in the way of storytelling to justify its existence. Disappointingly, nothing is made of the interesting decision to stage this as a solo show, which surrenders the euphoric anonymity and togetherness of the dance floor while squandering an opportunity to reflect on, perhaps, the loneliness that sometimes persists amidst community. Thinly conceived, Anatomy of a Night concludes in a last-minute spoken word section that queer spaces are important. The thing is, this hardly needs stating – and if we believe it, it’s hard not to feel like we should have just gone to the club instead.
Anatomy of a Night, Summerhall, until 25 Aug (not 19), 10.30pm